Educating Timothy Geithner: The Congressional Review Panel on Capitol Hill
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The American people worry about how their $590 billion in taxpayer money is being spent in the big bank bailout—and, on Capitol Hill today, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was told why. In his first appearance before the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which has spent nearly six months reviewing the expenditures of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), COP chairwoman Elizabeth Warren told Geithner:
People are angry that even if they have paid their bills on time consistently and never missed a payment, their TARP-assisted banks are unilaterally raising their interest rates or slashing their credit lines….People are angry when they read headlines of record foreclosures because even if they aren’t personally facing trouble with their mortgages, they see their own property worth less and their communities declining as a result of the foreclosures all around them.
I appreciate your repeatedly stated commitment to transparency and accountability…but more remains to be done. People need to understand why you are making the choices you are making.
Bailout Oversight Panel Recommends Eight Changes to Avoid Future Crises
The congressional oversight committee examining how the U.S. Treasury Department is spending taxpayer money in the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to help bailout the financial system says the nation needs smart regulation to help prevent another financial crisis and protect our economic future.
The Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) released a report today, which discusses how regulation would have helped avert the financial crisis and how it can help avoid future troubles.
Treasury Dept. Not Looking After Taxpayer Money
President-elect Barack Obama has a laundry list of Bush disasters to clean up after he gets in office, and he says fixing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is among his first priorities. Good thing, too, because the congressional oversight committee charged with examining how the first $350 billion of our taxpayer money was spent finds the U.S. Treasury Department isn’t exactly looking after our money. The oversight committee released its second report in recent days, and The Washington Post sums up the findings as follows:
The report says the department has not articulated a plan for restoring lending to consumers. It asks again why the Treasury has refused to spend any money on foreclosure prevention programs. And it says the department is sowing confusion in the financial markets, undermining the stated purpose of the rescue program, by failing to require companies to report how they are spending federal investments of taxpayer dollars.
